Compression associated with data, especially data in the form of images, generally is “lossy compression”, although, as will be described presently; in some instances, “lossless compression” may be used. Standard well-known “lossy compression” techniques, such as JPEG, sacrifice fine details in the image to gain storage efficiency, minimizing file size. The degree of compression in the stored image is referred to as its “quality” or “Q” factor.
It is often the case that the amount of information to be stored exceeds the resource available to hold it. For example, a vacationing user may have a digital camera with one “FLASH ROM”. If conditions are conducive to photography and opportunities are abundant, the photographer may fill the non-volatile storage before the vacation is completed. If new opportunities for photographs present themselves, the photographer must decide whether to delete images to make room for others.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a technique (method, system, apparatus, article of manufacture, signal-bearing media) to adaptively adjust compression quality of data to permit the incremental storage into a predetermined space-of-objects, which may be lossily-compressed.
For expository purposes, the invention will be described in terms of a digital camera, i.e. a camera which records images as compressed files in a fixed-size non-volatile storage, although this should not be construed as limiting the scope of the invention. The invention can be practiced in any situation which allows for lossy data compression. It is also useful in some situations where lossy compression is not acceptable, but where a plurality of lossless compression schemes are available, the denser ones requiring more time or resource to execute. Although the storage described herein is customarily semiconductor non-volatile storage, the invention is not limited to that type; rotating magnetic (disk) storage, tape storage, or any other digital storage may be utilized.